Caragh Thuring

Yeah, I mean, and I feel a bit like that about even making paintings.

There's an irreverence to this sort of hierarchy and it's about breaking that down in a way.

And all these things are there to play with and have fun with and also use in a different way, you know, to create new meaning or to sort of poke people that might recognise aspects of them or relate to certain things.

So, you know, that's the beauty of making paintings, that you're absolutely at liberation to do exactly what you want.

And to actually remind yourself to do that is actually the hardest thing and to allow yourself to do that.

And I think the reason I probably didn't work for 10 years was I couldn't work out how to even approach that.

I didn't, you know, think how can I sit in a studio on my own and make something from nothing really in a way.

And when I finally decided that I would try that, that was the thing that sort of motivated me the most was sculpture in a way.

Something that's physical or film, something that moved and existed beyond, you know, the screen or the image that you're looking at at that moment.

So it was about how can I do that with painting that's so static and flat really and around the edge of a room.

I certainly did at the beginning when I started working again, but also it was about how to get in people's way, like to take physical space in a way or involve the human body in the painting so that you were looking into a different space.

And I see that as both actual, you know, feeling that you're walking into some sort of

like an architecture in a sense, or a room, but also mentally that you find a way to go somewhere else out of the space that you might be inhabiting at that moment or the things that you might be surrounded while still relating to those things.

So it's playing with those different sort of lateral spaces in a way, I guess.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, I actually did think of that painting as a sort of cheeky self-portrait in a way without having ever painted one since I was at college.

But I went to Berlin when I first moved to London.

I was an intern in a gallery called the Agency Gallery that was in the East End at the time.

And we were doing the art fair and I stayed with some friends of my parents.

And they said, oh, you know, there's a sausage called a Thuringian.